Abstract
The author approaches the works of Karl W. Deutsch from the position of a historian and presents three aspects of his own encounters with Deutsch’s writings. First, he describes how he applied some of the methodological principles in Deutsch’s concept of nation-building to his own research work. Second, he presents his opinion on the place Deutsch occupies in the evolution of ‘theories of nationalism’. Third, he reflects on how Deutsch’s The Nerves of Government can serve as a source of inspiration in the present day, especially the parts of this work that deal with the risks for the collapse of political systems.
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Notes
- 1.
This text was first published as: Miroslav Hroch, “Three Encounters with Karl W. Deutsch,” Sociologicky casopis/Czech Sociological Review, 2012, vol. 48, no. 6: 1115–1129. The permission to republish this text was granted by the Institute of Sociology, Czech Academy of Science, Prague. The author was a historian at Charles University, Prague. Address: Miroslav Hroch, Faculty of Humanities, Charles University, U Krize 8, 158 00 Prague 5-Jinonice, Czech Republic, e-mail: hrochmir@seznam.cz. The text was translated by Robin Cassling.
- 2.
Hroch (1968).
- 3.
Some results were summarised under the entry ‘Nationalism—Western’ in International Encyclopedia of the Social and Behavioral Sciences (Smelser/Baltes 2001).
- 4.
- 5.
He returned to this terminology in 1966 in the introduction to Nation-Building, which he co-edited with W. J. Foltz (Deutsch/Foltz 1966).
- 6.
Here, however, Smith wrongly reproaches Deutsch and the ‘modernists’ for taking too little account of the linguistic (ethnic) background of nation-building.
- 7.
This is moreover not the only instance where Gellner made the target of his criticism an author whose opinion he had interpreted incorrectly.
- 8.
Cf., for example, ‘Nation-Building and National Development’, where he explains his concept of nation-building, and which serves as the introduction to Nation-Building (Deutsch/Foltz 1966), or his contribution to the anthology Mobilization, Center-Periphery-Structure and Nation-Building (Torsvik 1981).
- 9.
Nervy vlady (1971a).
- 10.
- 11.
The first edition, which is not the one usually cited, dates from 1963.
References
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Hroch, M. (2020). Three Encounters with Karl W. Deutsch. In: Taylor, C., Russett, B. (eds) Karl W. Deutsch: Pioneer in the Theory of International Relations. Pioneers in Arts, Humanities, Science, Engineering, Practice, vol 25. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-02910-8_12
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